“Frankie?” On the tiny picture-in-picture screen, Logan jackknifes upwards. “Fuck, why are you crying?”
“I’m not.”
“Liar.”
I swipe at my face. “Your wife is a bit of a cry baby.”
“That’s okay. What’s wrong?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. At first. But Logan just waits me out, until I’ve taken a few deep breaths, and theneverythingspills, fast and furious.
How hurt I felt when she took my dad’s side when I was a teenager, how she let him lay down the law with me, and told me that boarding school and a women’s only college might be what a girl like me needed. How reluctant I was to move home for my master’s degree, but I thought it might bring us closer together, so I could understand her, woman to woman. Instead, it was a frosty year of stilted communication.
And how I’ve mostly made my peace about us being fundamentally different people, but…I still clearly have some unresolved feelings about her, because now I’m a blubbering mess.
“I begged her,” I whisper. “I begged her to stop him. To talk to him. To do something. And she just...” My voice breaks. “She chose him. She always chooses him, lets him have his way. You want to know why my name is Francesca? Because when they found out they couldn’t have more children, and I would be their only baby, my dad wanted to literally name me Frank Junior. She didn’t want him to do that, but she couldn’t bring herself to suggest any other name, either. So she just feminized his name, and he immediately shortened it to Frankie anyway.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Did she call you Francesca, then?”
I laugh bitterly. “Oh, no. I wasn’t Francesca again until I went away to school. Melissa Wilson doesn’t rock the boat, even in secret. So I don’t know how to take these texts. My mother isn’t that deep, you know? She loves me, in her own way, but she communicates exclusively in memes and self-help videos that are all passive aggressive commentary on my life choices.”
“So she doesn’t really communicate at all.”
“Exactly. And so…what the fuck is this?” I take a deep breath and take a screenshot of the messages so I can send it to him.
“She doesn’t usually write messages like that?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
Logan is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, very unexpectedly, “I owe you an apology.”
“What? For what?”
“I now understand better why you ran in Vegas. You had every reason to think I would choose my career over you. Because that’s what your parents taught you to expect.” His face tightens. “And that’s bullshit. You deserve so much more than that.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Not for me.” He holds up his hand. “But I get it. I don’t expect you to take my word for that. I’m going to show you, and I won’t pressure you to believe me any faster than whenever it clicks in for you that I mean it. We have all the time in the world, Frankie.”
I don’t argue with him. There’s no point. He’s had a life that has led him to be confident in what he believes. My experience has made me a lot more pessimistic, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But he’s right about one thing—I’m not ready to see it from his point of view. Not yet.
As if he can read my mind, he shifts the subject. Not that far, but away from me. “You know, my sister has had a rockier relationship with our mom than I have. Ironically, my sister is also the one to communicate in memes and self-help videos, but it’s in conjunction with a long-ass lecture. But something that I think has been hard for her to accept about our parents is that they come from a certain generation where being nice is valued above almost everything else.”
I blow out my cheeks in frustration. “Yeah, that’s my mom exactly.”
“I don’t know if this is also true for her, then, but I know it’s hard for my mom to get around that veneer and be real. So when she does, it’s worth rewarding.” He gives me a crooked smile. “In much the same way I like to be called good boy in the right circumstances. Everyone likes a solid pat on the head.”
“I’m not infantilizing my mother.”
“Of course not. She’s supposed to parent you, not the other way around. But if she ever does something that feels like it’s in the right direction, a bit of positive feedback there might help.”
“That sounds suspiciously like something she’s sent me in a video at some point.”
“I’m pretty sure I learned it from my sister the same way.” He touches his phone screen. “I wish I could hold you right now.”
